


Five Steps Backward, Six Steps Forward

by Harukami



Category: Open Sorcery
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-26
Updated: 2016-06-26
Packaged: 2018-07-18 11:36:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7313737
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Harukami/pseuds/Harukami
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After BEL/S saves a certain someone, Decker doesn't know how to handle his feelings, relief causing a backwards grief to come up again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Steps Backward, Six Steps Forward

**Author's Note:**

> [Open Sorcery](http://amomentofpeace.net/?num=250) is an interactive fiction game by Abigail Corfman. It's a game about technology, magic, and becoming a person.
> 
> Open Sorcery is short, sweet, and incredibly replayable. You can beat it in 40 minutes; I played it for five hours straight, trying out new things, and still haven't seen everything. There are multiple endings, and each action can affect the game in ways that ripple down the line, so that your options can be different as events occur. Sometimes you'll save nobody. Sometimes, if you work really hard, you can save everybody. You can do it in different ways, too. Your choices are meaningful, which is so, so important in a game _about_ meaningful choice. It's beautifully written, with incredible, evocative characters. It's available for free on PC or (with more content) costs a few dollars on Android and iPhone--see the link above. It's a very _kind_ game (though you can, if you like, play it unkindly as well. It'll let you). _Play this game_. I want to recommend it to everyone I've met. I want to sing its praises off the rooftops. I played it last weekend and have thought about it all week.
> 
> My fic has spoilers for one of the events in the game; one difficult to trigger, but well worth it. Please play this game. I'll wait.

**.1. Denial**

It's not real. Decker is sure of that. It's an illusion, it's a creature, it's Matter and Motive here to—well, what? Do what exactly?

He knows what he'd had in front of him before. Light and Love. Reflections of Light forming a shape in front of him that had no solid form. Reflections of Love giving it voice and energy and passion, laughter and the memory of life. But it hadn't been real, not truly. He'd known that too.

(The creature that had been visiting him every month since the accident wasn't Andy.)

"Decker? Seriously, babe, you're freaking me out."

(The creature that had been visiting him every month hadn't been able to see him, acknowledge him, hear him. It wasn't _there_. It was just the past slipped forward to the present. A conversation replaying itself in front of him without him having any part in it. Decker would never have been able to cry in front of Andy and not have the conversation stop dead while Andy tried to comfort him.)

"Babe, what can I do? Did I say something wrong? C'mon, even my jokes aren't making you smile right now, I wanna see your smile—"

Andy is trying to comfort him.

He tries to find words to speak but cries harder. Cries over the fried remnants of his Firewall, cries over what he realizes must have happened. He'll put power back into her. He and Janet can do it together. And Andy—

—What role will Andy have in this?

(Andy can't be here.)

But Andy is here, arms around him, smelling of cologne and life. Solid physical Matter.

The Motive is probably still Love, though.

 

**.2. Anger**

They fight the next day. Decker starts it, fists balled up, heart pounding in his chest.

"Why the hell do you think you can go out now?!" he's saying. He hears his voice coming out pushed by the rage inside him and doesn't know where else to pour it. The anger is pounding hot in him. "Don't you understand how much we have to deal with?"

Andy is taken aback, then frustrated. It comes out too. "Look, my parents need to know I'm alive!"

"Alive," Decker repeats. "So you're just going to fucking call a taxi or get on a bus—"

"—I was thinking a bus, yeah—"

"—so you can go surprise your parents a year after they buried you?!"

Andy draws a breath in slowly and lets it out even more slowly. He's trying not to be upset. He always does, when they fight. 

( _I spent too many years mad at myself and everyone and the world to_ want _to be mad at anyone again,_ he'd said once once, tone too light. _I used up all my anger stores trying to carve my self-hate out of myself. Don't have any left._

But it had been a joke. A heavy joke, but a joke. Decker knows that. Because your stores of anger don't get used up. They're underground wells—no, scratch that. There's nothing of Water in them. They're Fire and Fear combined.

He thinks of the city of Centralia. An accident in the mines and a fire that's been burning for sixty years underground. Smoke pouring up through cracks in the ground. That's anger. _That's_ anger. Doesn't matter if the smoke gets used up if the fire keeps burning. They say it'll burn for centuries more. All its fuel is buried deep.)

"I was thinking," Andy says, with a voice that shakes even though he tries to keep it even, "that I'd call first. They'll probably think it's a prank. Not like they knew I was dating a wizard."

"I don't call myself—" Decker cuts himself off, hearing the brittle tone of his voice. He won't get distracted. "Look, you're alive again, but we have to—have to find out a way to make that work. Death certificates are usually final! And they'll flip out."

Andy says, " _You're_ flipping out. Would you rather I were dead? You're acting like you wish I was still dead!"

"I never wanted you to die!" Decker yells. "But I mourned you for months! I moved on, Andy! I got past it as much as anyone can get past losing someone they loved and I picked up the pieces of my life again and I don't know how to stop mourning even though you're in front of me!"

"I'm alive whether you like it or not!" Andy yelled. "And you can't keep me locked up in here! You don't want me around, and there are other people I love who I have to see!"

(And like that the fire goes out. 

No, not out. But whatever crack was billowing smoke stops, for now, billowing. It's wisps instead; sad, strangled wisps.)

"I don't want to keep you locked up," Decker whispered. "I just don't want you to go."

Andy's own anger sputters weakly at the fight going out of Decker. "But I—"

"No, you don't get it," Decker says. He sits heavily on his bed. His wards are glowing, strong, humming. He wishes he could draw strength from them but this is a too-human problem. "What if the bus crashes? I can't do this again."

"What if it doesn't?" Andy says, but sits with him, holding an arm out to him.

Decker takes the offer.

 

**.3. Bargaining**

_Bring him home safely,_ Decker thinks, and doesn't know who he's asking. Still, he makes promises. _I'll do anything. Please bring him home safely._

Andy's visiting his family. They'd got in contact. Explained things. Janet helped, healed what she could with her careful words and promises. There were tears. Decker hadn't been there for that part, but Janet told him. "I think they cried a freaking thunderstorm," she said. "A hurricane."

"Weird," he'd said tightly.

And then she'd hugged him too and something inside him had given way, rushing out, that had been tightly contained until now. Guilt and hope. Terror that he'd regain Andy only to lose him again.

That he'll go out and not come back.

(It had been a closed-coffin funeral. That hadn't mattered to Decker. He knew what was in there wasn't Andy, was just empty Matter, but had wanted to see that Matter one last time. 

He regrets that still.)

He's not the type of person to pray. He's always put more faith in human choice, human power. There was more a human could do if they were aware of the spirit world than most people believed. He'd done what he could to get back on his feet. Help others, always. That was their code. Even when you couldn't help yourself, if you could help others, you could contribute to the overall betterment of the world.

After all, nothing could bring the dead back.

He stares at his computer, then goes back to cleaning up the damaged code of his Firewall. Of BEL/S. _Bring him home safely,_ he begs, and isn't sure who he's asking, staring at the magical code spiraling out across the screen. So damaged. So very damaged. 

_Please. I'll do anything._

 

**.4. Depression**

It hadn't been real. That's the fact of it: It hadn't been real. The ghost had been there, and he'd cried himself to sleep, and had a wonderful dream. An impossible dream. Andy brought back to life, given real flesh even though that was impossible. BEL/S seeing a problem and trying to fix it, pouring Firepower and identity and Life into Decker's own understanding of who Andy was until Andy came back, Andy really came back—but then he'd woken up and the bed was empty.

Unreal. Impossible.

But that is a dream too.

He wakes for real this time, but with that sense of loss still heavy in his heart, and he cries. He cries silently like he'd taught himself in those long months after the accident, but even if he's quiet he's shaking.

Andy rolls over next to him. "Babe?" he asks, a quiet, familiar voice in the dark.

(How many nights had he woken Andy up, before the accident? How many nights of being up too late working magic, communicating with the others, tinkering on his computer. How many times had Andy stayed the night here and been woken up at two am, at three, to see Decker lit by some unnatural, amazing glow, and mumbled "Babe?" in exactly that way, that simple, normal confusion at seeing something going on in the middle of the night and wanting it to stop, wanting Decker to come back to bed?)

He should feel happy at the voice. He knows that. But it feels like all of his emotions are wrong.

(Like they've been broken. No, like they'd broken after the accident and never healed right, and now Andy was alive again, and the force of him coming to life had rebroken all those bones which had patched themselves up. Calcified injuries shattering, leaving shards that sometimes hurt and sometimes just felt numb.)

"Babe?" Andy asks again, when he doesn't respond.

"I don't know," Decker finally answers aloud. "I feel shitty."

"Yeah. I can tell." Andy's still half-asleep, but he rolls closer, smelling like sweat and human skin and life. Decker tries to find a response in him but can't. It throbs and aches, that spot where Andy's death is inside him.

Andy puts an arm around him. It's heavy, and Decker thinks about protesting it, but he curls in closer anyway, like the heat of Andy's life can push away the pain of Andy's death.

 

**.5. Acceptance**

And one day he wakes up and realizes that he's planning out his day with Andy in it and there's no flinch when he thinks about that.

(and knows that he's going to be okay.)

 

**.6. Comfort**

"Hurry up, Decker, we're gonna miss all the good spots!"

" _You_ hurry up," Decker calls back, as if Andy isn't already fifteen feet in front of him and rapidly putting more distance between them. 

It's fine if he takes his time; Andy gets there first and claims the spot, laying down a blanket and pulling out the picnic lunch he prepared. Janet, walking with Decker, nudges him with an elbow. "Domestic," she says. "Lucky, lucky."

"Pretty lucky," he agrees, ignoring her teasing.

They catch up soon enough and join him, taking a seat on the hill overlooking the Cherry Orchard Rest Home. Others will be coming too; it's a good view and they contacted friends and family for the evening picnic. Sarah will be coming, and Janet's brother and mother in a little while. 

Footsteps come up behind them; they turn, knowing who it is. She'd come with them, after all. She's just slower.

BEL/S walks unsteadily still, not completely used to her new mechanical body. But she seems happy; there's a small smile on her face, and the bright points of flame that are her eyes are brighter than usual.

"Here, take a seat," Janet says, smiling up at her. She pats the blanket.

BEL/S folds herself down and hugs her knees, staring up at the sky. "It hasn't started yet," she says. "The event."

"Fireworks," Andy corrects. He smiles at her too. He always does. Confused gratitude. Confusion. He still doesn't understand how he's alive again, but he knows this AI, this elemental, this person is the cause of it.

There is a pause as BEL/S googles the term. "Fireworks," BEL/S says. She nods.

"The sky has to get a bit darker yet," Decker says. "You'll see it."

"We'll see it," BEL/S corrects.

"Yeah," Decker says. "You're right."

Andy puts an arm around Decker's waist, and Decker leans against him, resting his head on Andy's shoulder. 

They wait for everyone to show up, the people they know and love, the people they protected, the people who protected them. BEL/S sits with Janet, and none of them are cold in the late fall chill. She puts out enough heat for comfort. And they wait for the event to begin.

The moment is a metonymy for life, Decker decides.

He leaves it at that.


End file.
